The Story of a Great SchoolmasterWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The Story of a Great Schoolmaster
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Sanderson, F. W. (Frederick William), 1857-1922; School principals -- Great Britain -- Biography
'This began to change the whole organisation of the school, its aims
and methods. It was no use organising boys in forms by the ordinary
methods of promotion for this sort of work. You have to make up your
mind what you have to do, and then go about and collect anybody who
would be of service to that particular work. You would require boys of
one characteristic and boys of another. You make them up into teams for
the particular work they have to do. The boys who do not fit into this
or that particular work must have some other particular work found for
them. You begin to design the work of the school for them. You must
have all the apparatus you want for it, and you must organise for it,
but you begin by organising the work for the boys and what they need
to find out, and not by putting the boys into the organisation. Now,
presently you discover, when you do this, that not a single boy exists
who is not wanted for some particular work; to carry out your object
every boy is fundamentally equal. One does this, one does that. Each
boy has his place in the team, and in his place he is as important as
any other boy. Placing them in order of merit does not work any more.
The scientific method absolutely changed the position towards class
lists and order of merit. That was an astonishing result.
'Another astonishing result was that we could not have anybody who was
not working. If a boy was not working, you could see that he was not
working. You could see that he was doing nothing. He could not sit at
the back of a class-room and seem to be working. Everybody was working.
You can manage that in school, but what about the world? All sorts of
people may seem to be working and not be working at all. The curate
may be doing nothing! (_Chuckle and something inaudible._) This seems
to land us into the extraordinary fact that no community if it is
scientifically organised can carry any one who does not do service. I
hope you will agree with me that that is scientific.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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